You may have read Rebecca Martinson's batshit letter to her Delta Gamma sorority sisters at the University of Maryland, but you haven't experienced the full mind-blowing vitriol of this remarkable document until General Zod performs it for you. This exclusive Funny or Die clip of Man of Steel star Michael Shannon, who plays Superman's Kryptonian rival, has just surpassed "Bat Fight" to become my favorite FOD video thanks to Shannon's impeccable comic timing and delivery. more »
Superman and General Zod unleash their best tough-guy stares on separate Man of Steel collector covers for the UK's Empire magazine this week, and, I'm calling it, Zod wins. All that screen time playing hard-asses (Premium Rush) and nut jobs (Revolutionary Road) has molded Michael Shannon's mug into an incredibly effective billboard for threat and danger. He looks pissed and lethal here, And that gives him the slight edge in this Kryptonian staring contest. more »
The latest teaser for Zack Snyder's Man of Steel is an effective one. The clip introduces General Zod via a grainy video transmission that makes Superman's arch enemy look a lot creepier than he does in production stills. more »
With all the fancy 'staches and old-school automobiles, this second trailer for Ariel Vroman's The Iceman reminds me of The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" video, with a lot of cold-blooded killing substituted for 1970s TV crime drama parody. more »
Kidding! Michael Shannon was born to play oddball creepy-types, and I mean that in the best way possible. So his turn as Richard Kuklinski, the notorious contract killer from New Jersey known as The Iceman who killed for sport and for gangsters for three decades, seems fitting. Anyone else feeling curious pangs of sympathy for the Mafia hitman-slash-family man who claimed to have murdered over 100 men over the course of his "career?"
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The indomitable bike messenger played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Premium Rush is named Wilee, as in Wile E. Coyote, the less successful half of Looney Tunes' eternal desert chase duo. A few minutes into the movie, however, it becomes clear he's more like the Road Runner: Wiry and whippet thin, Wilee darts through Manhattan traffic on his fixed gear bike — chain lock wrapped around his waist — thumbing his nose at the NYPD and evading the dogged pursuit of corrupt detective Bobby Monday (Michael Shannon). No Chamois Ass is he. more »
If you thought you were getting any work done during the second part of the day, think again. The good people at Vulture have apparently teamed up with the RAND Corporation and NASA to devise a series of charts with endless permutations that rank today's most valuable movie stars. But, we ask: Who are today's Most Valuable Indie Stars?
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Any great awards show monologue skewers the nominees and sets the tone for the festivities to come, and this weekend's awards tour didn't disappoint -- if you were watching the Film Independent Spirit Awards and not the Oscars, that is. Host Seth Rogen trumped Billy Crystal the day before the Academy Awards when he roasted Hollywood's brightest along with Spirit Award nominees (like "creepy" -- and apparently good humored -- Michael Shannon). As for Rogen's best joke? It's got to be a toss up between his Ratner snipe ("Without awards season we wouldn't know how much of a horrible bigot Brett Ratner is") and his Lars von Trier hiding-in-Argentina bit. Hit the jump to watch the magic.
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*: As determined by Movieline's Institute For the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics after crunching 23 weeks of data from the awards cognoscenti and beyond. Thank you for reading; our work here is done.
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You know that when two of the most respected pundits in all of Oscardom argue (within days of each other!) for curtailing both the epic Academy Awards season race and the ceremony in which it culminates, patience for all this crap is wearing thin. With that in mind — and also considering that the "race" for most of these categories ended weeks or months ago — who's up for an Oscar Index lightning round? (The entire staff at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics raises its hands.) OK, then — to the Index!
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"Let's have a moment of silence for the suffering Oscar bloggers as they enter the most trying and mortifying weeks of their labors." Such was Glenn Kenny's tweeted lament earlier this week -- one eerily anticipating today's latest, sanity-thrashing edition of Oscar Index. And that's just its effect on readers! You really don't want to see the catatonic pall saturating Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics. On the other hand, we're gonna make a fortune recycling this mounting pile of wine bottles. To the Index!
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It's a little difficult for the specialists at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics to come into work these days, what with the pall of predictability settling in over the awards landscape and the painstaking studies into backlash physics yielding less and less of practical substance. What's a frustrated kudologist to do? Besides drink for the next four weeks straight, I mean. Let's look for ideas and encouragement for all in this week's Oscar Index.
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There's good news and bad news to begin this post-nomination, next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-last installment of Oscar Index. The good news? It's kind of almost over! The bad news? Oy. Please don't make me repeat it.
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Smack in the middle of a two-week frame yielding two awards shows and a pair of nomination announcements that will culminate in this year's Oscar nods, the researchers at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics have gained minimal insight into where the Academy may take the 2011-12 awards race in next Tuesday's final nominations. Or maybe they're all just sleeping. It's been that kind of year. Let's check their work in this week's Oscar Index.
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What a week at Movieline's Institute for the Advanced Study of Kudos Forensics, where the pundits' hustle harmonized with the guilds' bustle to create a heavy-duty wake-up call for some otherwise dormant awards-season underdogs. They also telegraphed danger for a few juggernauts once thought unassailable. What does it all mean as we head into the Critics Choice and Golden Globe Awards weekend? To the Index!
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